It's All Happening At The Markets Zoo

Wouldn’t it be great to see the animal spirits animating the world’s markets for real?

The Bull Bear, Beaver…and Unicorn (JE via ChatGPT)

“Someone told me,” sang Paul Simon in his song At The Zoo, back in 1968, a pivotal year for me as it was for must of the rest of the world. “It’s all happening at the zoo,” he continued. “I do believe it / I do believe it’s true.” But then he began to spill the beans. “Orangutans are skeptical / Of changes in their cages / And the zookeeper is very fond of rum.”

All good fun, though—since I was exceeding young—I have found zoos profoundly disturbing places, with their sad-eyed orang-utans and crazed ocelots bouncing off the walls of their cages. And the same goes for most aquariums, with their bored sea otters and deranged orcas.

But imagine, even for just a moment, that there was a zoo that we could all visit where we could observe—in real-time—the animal spirits that animate markets. Where the animal spirits were happy to be on display. What might that be like?

Well, I imagine a place where enthusiastic curators explain the ways in which human emotions have driven our economies over time. A place where world-leading research is carried out on how we might redesign market dynamics to boost their ability to create long-term prosperity, improve living standards and inclusivity, and deliver environmental sustainability.

A place, in short, where the themes animating this Rewilding Markets series of posts come to life. Indeed, I have been trying to imagine such a resource as part of my latest book project—and it has wonderfully taxed my brain. Along the way, I have come to see the “Markets Zoo” concept as a vivid, playful-yet-insightful way to explore economic behavior through animal metaphors. Part theme park, part learning lab, part satire.

Now picture the front gate: “The Markets Zoo: Where Animals Spirits Run (Relatively) Wild.” No cages here, just enclosures, pavilions and friendly curators keen to ensure that you have an enjoyable experience. But they are also determined that you improve your market and financial literacy along the way, something that most of us could benefit from.

Up with the Bulls

So, let’s start with the Bull Enclosure, part of the Optimist’s Pavilion. The atmosphere here is charged, energetic, upbeat, noisy. Screens flicker everywhere to show the upward march of prices and markets. You can smell the pungency of risk-taking hormones in the air, accompanied by unshakeable belief in the prospects for future market growth. All bets are on.

Visitors may be asked to list some of the factors they think might encourage market bulls to stampede, for example interest rate cuts and tech sector IPOs, or initial public offerings.

Next, drop into the “Pigsty,” with its Greed Is Good Bistro, throbbing like that long-ago deep future bar in Star Wars. Here the vibe is startlingly decadent, dripping in luxury, ticker tape drifting around like confetti. The market players in this space are party animals: myopic, often overleveraged, and generally infected by a “to the moon” mindset.

Don’t miss the Ponzi Scheme Arcade: if you like slot machines, this one is for you. See how long you can keep the fraudulent tottering before it inevitably collapses. And test your skills by seeing how many people’s investments and pensions you can take down in the process.

Just a short walk away, there is the Unicorn Paddock, with its tongue-in-cheek sign: “Welcome to the Unicorn Market—where every asset is just one tweet away from a billion-dollar valuation, and gravity is optional.” The visual effects here are something else. Every few minutes, a mist swirls across the enclosure and out steps yet another charismatic silhouette. Most are dressed head-to-trainer in the darkest black. The wise sayings of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs spool endlessly.

Recorded by a well-known actor, the Unicorn voiceover loop insists: “We’re not building a product. We’re building a lifestyle. A community. A protocol of meaning.” Later you will discover that the Markets Zoo’s gift shop sells sportswear declaring: “I Bought the Hype and All I Got Was This Tokenized T-shirt.”

Down with the Bears

With our hair now standing on end from the crackling electrostatic charge, we make our way across to the Bear Cave. A quieter space, indeed the depressive mood hits us as soon as we walk in, like freezing fog. A digital gauge on one wall of this part of the Pessimist’s Pavilion provides a constantly updated version of what novelist Robert Harris called “The Fear Index.”

Perhaps you stop by “The Chicken Coop: Your Very Own Market Panic Room.” This is a seriously unsettling space, with screens strobing messages like “RECESSION!”, “CRASH!” and “CRYPTO MELTDOWN!” No surprise, then, that there’s an exhibition stand in the corner promoting panic bunkers... and a mind-boggling display of forearms you can produce using the latest 3D printers.

Here most bets have been swept off the table. Investors are busily consulting their doomsday books, and having intense discussions about the price of gold and joining Mark Zuckerberg in building Hawaiian bunkers.

The Bear is busily encouraging the shorting of stocks, which—as it is happy to explain—involves selling shares that you don't currently own, with the intention of buying them back later at a lower price to make a profit. You are encouraged to prepare for a long, hard economic winter.

Before you leave, you may also find yourself invited to climb into the “Short the Bubble” simulator, where you will be encouraged to compete in spotting the formation—and impending collapse—of market bubbles of various sizes in historical media footage.

Then, in quick succession, you visit the Fox Den, a somewhat mysterious space, filled with wall-charts and insider news clippings. Here the players are slick, smart and opportunistic, always on the look-out for arbitrage opportunities. They are loose with the facts, playing both sides of the market, and constantly whispering market-deranging rumors into their cellphones.

Close by, but an immense distance away in terms of values, you enter the Elephant Forest. Here the atmosphere is very different: wise, slow-moving, allergic to market hype—even if stampedes can still happen, accompanied by ear-splitting trumpeting. Still, the players here are blessed with long-term memories, and are happy to tell you where the reliable opportunity spaces can be found. They are also well-informed on what went wrong in a wide range of previous downturns, crashes and depressions that most other players have completely forgotten.

Some of the Zoo’s other exhibits I have personally found most engaging include those focusing on ecological functions, rather than specific species. So, for example, try to find time to visit the Pollinators Pavilion—and the somewhat spookier Scavenger Studio. The smell of carrion here is not for the faint-hearted.

The pollinator collection includes a range of actors that connect ecosystems, and, on the wider economic front, facilitate innovation and help value flow invisibly between sectors. In nature, we are talking about insects like bees and butterflies, and birds like hummingbirds.

In the economic world, meanwhile, we see exhibits spotlighting the venture capitalists and other investors interested in identifying and supporting regenerative enterprises. The signage reads: “Without pollinators, many ecosystems collapse. Same goes for economies. These small, often uncredited actors keep innovation supercharged.”

Across the way, in the Scavengers Studio, the crowds thin out a bit. Here the focus is on organisms and economic activities that thrive on disorder, decay, and creative destruction. They don’t build from scratch—they repurpose, restructure, and profit from the forgotten, the fallen, the failed.

In nature, we are talking about birds like vultures (a particular interest of mine) and mammals like jackals and hyenas. In our economies, their role is played by what are sometimes called “vulture capitalists.” Their motto might be: “Nothing Goes to Waste. Especially Not a Good Bankruptcy.”

Next: Beavernomics ? (source: Silvio Rebêlo for Countercurrent, 2025)

A dam fine time with the Beavers

Then, with a sigh of relief, you step into the Beaver Zone. A world of quiet, industrious builders, of systems thinkers, of long-term resilience. One key display maps the Beaver Economy, showing how market Beavers transform wider economic landscapes, creating the conditions for many others to thrive.

Here you may be invited to join others working on the Collaborative Dam Project, helping build and maintain infrastructure that filters “bad flows” (think pollution, floods, speculation) and, in the process, creates diversity long-term resilience and sustainable wealth.

As your visit winds down, please do drop by the Owl Observatory. But keep your voice down. This is a thoughtful space, filled with an array of quirky experiments. Players observe other people’s mistakes, quietly profiting from the market intelligence they garner.

You may be invited to take one or more quizzes to discover your own investor biases—among them overconfidence, loss aversion, or recency bias (with investors selectively recalling recent events more readily than historic ones). You may also find yourself invited to play the Bull, Bear & Beaver Game, to see what sort of investor you are today—and advising how you might improve your positive impact portfolio over time.

Finally, unless you are tempted to sign up for the Nighttime Safari (“Animal Spirits After Hours”), you check your watch, start in surprise, and begin to head for the exit. As you walk back toward the turnstiles, you are funnelled through an arch that is mirrored on every side.

In the unlikely event that you haven’t already clocked the fact, you see that all these animals have been metaphors for different parts of each and every one of us as investors, employees, consumers and voters.

And, just in case you want to take home a souvenir of your visit, we conclude with a diagram that some kind soul has sketched on a chalkboard outside the main gate of the Markets Zoo. It spotlights ten characteristics of Bull, Bear and Beaver markets. And it may just help you plan your next visit.

Do visit us again soon—and bring the family.